APTus AppCenter slow <SOLVED>

[Henry1]

Hi Pavroo,

I am on Sparkylinux 7.3 XFCE; in the last few days APTus AppCenter takes nearly 2 minutes to update packages the same as the System Upgrade tool when before they took about 20-25 seconds, has something changed recently or is a problem of mine?

Thank you
Henry

[duststuff]

Hi Henry, :-)

I'm not Pavroo, but a few days ago or so I had a 200+ MB update take about 1.5 - 2 hours instead of the usual 1-3 minutes or so, but since then things have been back to normal. Not sure what the cause was, but I think it was mainly two packages that made up most/all of the download, each one around 100+ MB. One was from a third-party repo and the other was most likely from the Sparky repo. My guess is that there was something wrong on a server hosting a repo or somewhere on the route in-between that was slowing things down.

If this persists for you, I would look into seeing if it's possible to switch one or more of your repos over to a mirror that's more local for you to see if that helps. I 'think' this is possible to do with Sparky, but haven't looked into it yet myself. If it is possible, I'm also not sure if it can be done through a more user-friendly GUI, or whether it would take some terminal commands, etc. You may also find it helpful to figure out if the slow-down is the result of only one/some repos on your system (you can search online for how to view the history of your package manager if you don't know how to do that). Also, for Pavroo or others to give more specific help, it would be helpful if you post your repo information within code markers copy/pasted from the output of

Code Select Expand

inxi -r as well as mentioning what package(s) you were downloading from what repo(s) during the time that it was relatively slow for you (if you're able to figure that out). It could be just a temporary glitch, but I'm guessing it's some sort of internet-related problem rather than a Sparky problem.

Hope that helps,
Dustin

[Henry1]

Hi Dustin,

From your suggestion I checked the repositories and I think the problem is https://repo.skype.com/deb/ stable main enabled as disabling it, APTus and System Upgrade tool are very fast now...The warning says: Impossible to recover https://repo.skype.com/deb/dists/stable/InRelease  504  Gateway Time-out [IP: 2.20.156.179 443]

I'll keep you updated...

Thank you for your help, Dustin.

Henry

[duststuff]

You're welcome, Henry; glad to hear you were able to identify the repo causing the slow-down. I've also noticed lately that the upgrade tool seems to have trouble connecting with the Skype repo. I also have a Proton VPN repo that's been giving me an error / warning about authentication because it can't find the signing key -- I've noticed that this repo was 'updated' in more than one upgrade session, but the problem persists. So far I haven't taken the time to trouble-shoot either of these issues. I think sometimes what happens with these third-party repos is that something gets changed on their side that requires a change on a user's system. This might normally get fixed by the Sparky developers via an update/upgrade once they're aware of it and have the time to address it, but it may also be possible for a user to fix it themselves if they already have or are willing to search for the knowledge they need to do so. With Skype, if you want more control and awareness on how it gets installed and updated, you can also do the install yourself (instructions on Skype website in my post below, although you may want to make some adjustments to avoid errors or to suit your own tastes, as they may be a bit out-of-date) rather than doing it through the APTus AppCenter.

[Henry1]

Hi Dustin,

Looking at the Skype official page, I have seen that the download is for Linux Snap: https://www.skype.com/en/get-skype/; I personally avoid snap at all costs as nobody knows what is going on inside that package and only Canonical can run a snap store...After xz backdoor, there might be problems with the verification of the author's application/package...If you have a hotmail account, there is no need to install Skype but just open it in a browser (I use Firefox)...

Thank you Dustin for your update.

[duststuff]

You're welcome, Henry.

I understand; I'm not a snap fan either, and am glad I don't 'have' to use it for anything with my current setup here.

What I was referring to is the same as or similar to 'Method 1' on this page: https://www.linuxcapable.com/how-to-install-skype-on-ubuntu-linux/ . It looks like this article was updated recently, so the instructions might be fine, but I had some issues when following similar instructions from a different online source -- they basically hadn't updated them for changes in gnupg2 as far as how signing keys are handled. Then once I started looking into it I also decided I wanted to use different paths for storing keys, etc. So here's what I have in my notes about this in regards to some edits I made to the commands used and what worked for me:

• Website 'easy download' link only offers a snap version. To install w/o using snap:
        ◦ Dependencies: software-properties-common apt-transport-https curl ca-certificates .
        ◦ Get key (DM edit): curl -fsSL https://repo.skype.com/data/SKYPE-GPG-KEY | sudo gpg --dearmor | sudo tee /etc/apt/keyrings/skype.gpg > /dev/null
        ◦ Add Skype 'stable' repo (DM edit): echo deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/skype.gpg] https://repo.skype.com/deb stable main | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/skype-stable.list
        ◦ [2023-Dec-16: One of the reasons I made edits to the above commands was to avoid having the key put in a legacy location, but now I'm wondering whether the changes I made will actually affect that, and how exactly the key got in that legacy location to cause the error. Maybe it was something that was done during the install process in the following step?]
        ◦ Update cache, then install 'skypeforlinux' pkg.

Since I started using Sparky I've just used the APTus AppCenter to install Skype, but I've kept these notes handy in case I ever need to do it manually.

Hope that helps,
Dustin

[Henry1]

The changes you made has probably caused the error, we (as regular users) shouldn't be doing this, Microsoft is very sneaky keep changing the way signing keys are handled creating issues very often lately; I will keep this information in case of need while checking for further developments.

Thank you very much Dustin.

Henry

[duststuff]

You're welcome, Henry.

Also, if/when you feel that the original topic you started has been resolved, it would be great if you could do one more thing and add '[Solved]' to the beginning or end of this thread's title. This would be helpful for anyone else searching these forums for a solution to the same problem. If you don't know how to do that, see this post (https://forum.sparkylinux.org/index.php/topic,4239.msg17825.html#new). Basically, you just edit the first post in the thread; to do that, go to the bottom right of the post and it looks like you can use either 'Quick Edit' or 'More...'-'Modify' to get to a page where you can make the change and save it, etc.

[Henry1]

Hi Dustin,

Done it!

Thank you for all your help.

Henry

[Henry1]

Hi Dustin,

According to this thread of 2 weeks ago https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/skype/forum/all/download-the-deb-installation-file-for-debian/73b4fea5-736c-4513-9422-b331d77c4343 the latest version of Skype (8.119.0.201) isn't available for Debian as a .deb file. Microsoft has discontinued providing .deb packages for Skype on Linux.

As most users don't want to use Snap (even recommended!) the other option is Flathub Skype but it is an unofficial one (there is a yellow warning saying "not verified"); I think the best way is to open Skype in a web browser for the moment waiting for future developments.

I hope this helps everyone to understand what's going on with Skype and possible issue with slow System Upgrade Tool or APTus App center.

Best regards,

Henry

[duststuff]

Thanks a lot, Henry, for your research and update on this -- it's quite helpful to know and I've just updated my notes. :-)

Based on this new information, I think this would probably qualify as a Sparky 'bug' (i.e. the latest non-snap version of Skype can't be installed via APTus AppCenter, and if the Skype repo is enabled then it causes the update / upgrade process to become unnecessarily slow). I think it would be good to open this specific bug / issue as a new topic here in the forums -- would you like to do that or shall I?

With appreciation,
Dustin

[Henry1]

Hi Dustin,

I think it's a good idea, feel free to open a new topic here in the forums as I won't have enough time to check further developments.

Thank you for your appreciation and always prompt replies.

Henry